Faced with the imminent possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and what appears to be a deteriorating diplomatic stand-off, NATO and other western allies are again turning to sanctions in the absense of other viable options. Since the second world war governments around the world have turned to sanctions to solve their foreign-policy dilemmas on more than 700 occasions.
Recorded history notes sanctions going back as far as ancient Greece, when the Athenians banned merchants from nearby Megara because the Megarians had farmed land that was sacred to the Athenians and killed an Athenian herald. Megara enlisted the aid of Athens’ arch-rival Sparta, allegedly sparking the Peloponnesian War which brought Greece’s golden age to an end.
